


You can't choose what stays and what fades away

by JoyfullyyoursDav



Series: Never Let Me Go (Twins' Mom AU series) [2]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon, Angst, Bad Parenting, Canon Compliant, Child Abandonment, Dysfunctional Family, Gen, Long Lost/Secret Relatives, Memories, Motherhood, Original Character(s), Past Drug Addiction, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Twins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-13
Updated: 2018-03-13
Packaged: 2019-03-30 19:15:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13958220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoyfullyyoursDav/pseuds/JoyfullyyoursDav
Summary: Taako and Lup are far away from their home world, but their mother is closer to them than she's ever been. Leema hears more impossible stories. She finds proof. She reflects on what the Hunger gave her.





	You can't choose what stays and what fades away

**Author's Note:**

> This is part two of the Taako and Lup's mom series!
> 
> Title is from "No Light, No Light" by Florence and the Machines because I'm just gonna listen to this album over and over until this series is done.
> 
> Hopefully this path I'm headed is interesting to you all!

Leema didn't return home. She didn't know where she was headed, only that she had a hunger inside her now. An insatiable need to consume as much information about the Seven Birds as she could. She began tracking down every legend, every story, every rumor, collecting them all to pick apart for truth. It was nearly impossible, at first, to separate truth from fantasy. There were stories about trains materializing into nothingness. Fires that turned whole cities to glass. Towering stone creatures that calcified flesh into rock. A whole planet of ghosts, trapped in robotic prisons.

She eventually found the name of the organization that had sent the Birds on their mission. The Institute of Planar Research and Exploration. In the capitol of Castlepass, she spent days combing through records in the National Archive. She finally found an article containing a press release from the IPRE, dated exactly one day before the Darkness descended. The travelers were identified by name in this article, and Leema nearly choked when she saw "Lup and Taako." The document didn't state anything else about them. Just their names, and their existence on the ship that left this planet nearly twenty years earlier.

She set the newspaper down and felt…distinctly numb. She had been searching for scraps, any rumor or myth or theory that she could get her hands on. All based on a hunch, really: a gut feeling she hadn't taken time to explore. And now, she had proof. The twins she had given birth to a hundred thirty years ago had been on this interstellar mission. Their story had somehow spread across reality, and everyone knew about them. She, herself, knew more about them than she ever had, even though they were further from her than they'd ever been.

This article was confirmation, irrefutable proof, and it was tantalizing. Leema wanted more. She began searching for evidence of the twins _before_ they were Taako and Lup. To get more information, she'd likely have to prove who she was, who they had been. She combed through archives, public records and newspapers everywhere she knew or suspected the twins had lived, to no avail. She finally found a single record at a hospital in New Elfington. Leema coughed up forty gold pieces to obtain a scroll with the names _Teru_ and _Lemb_ written on them, clear as day. Her sister's signature appeared on the bottom, consenting to an examination. Diagnosis: gnome pox. Back at the inn where she was staying, Leema read and reread this document, smiling sadly. Smiling because they had been cared for, at least this one time, during an illness. Sad that _she_ hadn't ever been the one to do it, to tend to their sicknesses or scraped knees or broken bones, the ailments and bruises of childhood. She hadn't considered the way her children might have grown up. She hadn't considered that they'd grown up at all.

With the time that had passed since the birth of her children, Leema had coped. At first, she did so with potions and wine, herbs and powders, her old tried and true methods of self-obliteration. She wasted many, many years in a stunned stupor, completely numb to the world, cut off from everything. Those years were little more than white space to her now.

And she coped by only thinking of the twins as _newborns_. Even though when she left them, they were learning to walk. Even though the last time she had seen them, they had been children, long and lean, not a trace of baby fat to be found. Still, she pictured them as infants. Unchanging. Nestled next to each other in the basket where they used to sleep, the waning light from the setting suns casting golden light across their faces. To her, they remained frozen in time. Small, soft and safe—the implication being, she realized now, that she could return, pick them back up and be their mother, if she wanted.

And she also coped by pretending that her previous life—where she was married and pregnant, where she was in labor for seventy-nine hours, where she held two babies in her arms and memorized their faces—was nothing more than a dream. A life that belonged to someone else. Someone stronger, wiser, braver. Someone blessed, or lucky, or touched.

Then everything changed. The Ever-Night bloomed around their world. Much of the twelve years' darkness was lost to them all. Most folks didn't remember more than a sense of urgent, limitless despair. But Leema remembered. In the Ever-Night, she couldn't pretend. She couldn't tell herself that the twins were still infants, asleep in their basket, Teru's small hand wrapped around Lemb's tiny fist. Leema used to think, _This is hell._ Leema used to think, _This is punishment._ Leema used to whisper, _Lemb, Teru, Lemb, Teru_ until she lost her voice completely, until the shadows were all she knew. She couldn't numb herself, couldn't make the space around her go white and hazy; she couldn't do anything but feel. It was easy to believe this was divine retribution for the awful, wretched woman she'd turned out to be.

And when the world woke up again, twelve years somehow gone, Leema tried to go back to pretending. If the whole world had been swallowed, it wasn't _her_ punishment; she wasn't that important. She tried to believe in the dream again. When she thought of the twins at all, they were tiny, bundled up, long lashes, mouths shaped like bows.

But you can only stay in denial if others let you, and this time, the world refused. Everyone around her made her face the truth. The twins had grown up. She knew their names now, and she couldn't pretend that she didn't.

Leema didn't know how to parse all the information she had now, so she focused on what she felt, deep down, was the truth. Her children were Taako and Lup. They were a pair. One of fire, one of stone. They were together, after all this time. Far away from where they started, but still together.

And one final thing: she would find out what happened to them. What _really_ happened. She would find them, one way or another. She had no choice.


End file.
